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Wednesday, 5 September 2012

Dreadful Church teaching defender Bishop to address Catholic priests

The forthcoming Colloquium of the British Province of the Confraternity of Catholic Clergy will take place from 23-24 October. I mentioned before that my good friend Bishop Philip Egan will be there. He is celebrating Mass on the first day and preaching. The talk on the first evening will be given by Fr Uwe Michael Lang, on the subject of the 50th anniversary of Sacrosanctum Concilium, "Towards a New Liturgical Movement"

The second conference, on the New Evangelisation, will be given by Archbishop Augustine Di Noia, the recently-appointed Vice-President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei. He will be celebrating Mass at which Mgr Keith Newton, the Ordinary of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham will preach.

Finally, Fr Andrew Pinsent, Research Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Religion and Science at Oxford University will be speaking on "Science, Grace and Catholic Enlightenment."

Vatican II, the New Evangelisation, Science and Religion - for any moderate, Church-loving priest who wants to engage in the Year of Faith, what's not to like?

For the Tablet, quite a bit, it seems. The Notebook observes that Bishop Egan's appointment was seen as "part of a trend to appoint outspoken defenders of Church teaching to dioceses in England and Wales." How dreadful! Fancy appointing Bishops who are outspoken defenders of the teaching of the Church! Most of us might see the defence of the teaching of the Church as an uncontroversial requirement of Canon Law for the appointment of Bishops. In Tablet-speak it makes him a "rising star for the conservative wing of the
Church in England and Wales." Can they really mean that the other Bishops are generally not outspoken defenders of the teaching of the Church? Perish the thought!

In classic Tablet style, the Notebook piece was used as a dolly-up for a thunderous letter the following week (everyone I know who has ever written or tried to write to the Tablet has told me of the close editorial control of the letters page.) Mr Angry refers to Bishop Egan's nefarious role as Church teaching defender, along with his guilt by association with Bishop Mark Davies. He reckons that

The plans and purposes of this confraternity
should be made known as widely as possible,
openly debated and wherever necessary vigorously opposed.

You can see the full text of the letter in the comment from Richard Duncan at Fr Ray Blake's post CCC Colloquium: 2012. I refer priests to it especially because you may find that it motivates you to attend the Colloquium. Here is a link to the Booking form.

And here is another graphic that has been too long absent from the blog: